The Carabine à tige was invented by Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin

Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin

Louis-Étienne de Thouvenin was a French Army general. He invented the Carabine à tige , based on a method by which muzzle-loading rifles could be easily and effectively loaded.-Notes:...

. The method was an improvement of the invention of fellow Frenchman Henri-Gustave Delvigne

Henri-Gustave Delvigne

Henri-Gustave Delvigne was a French soldier and inventor. He became a captain in the French infantry service, from which he resigned on the outbreak of the 1830 July Revolution...

. Delvigne had developed chambered carbines and rampart rifle-muskets so that when forced against the chamber rim by ramming (with three strokes of a heavy ram), the bullet would become deformed and flatten, so as to expand in diameter against the inside of the bore, allowing the bullet to press against the rifling grooves

Rifling

Rifling is the process of making helical grooves in the barrel of a gun or firearm, which imparts a spin to a projectile around its long axis...

. When fired, the bullet would accompany the rifling and spin.

Carabine à tige

Thouvenin induced the deformation of the bullet by placing a steel stem inside and at the center of the powder chamber, around which powder was inserted, and on top of which the bullet was dropped. When hit by the ram, the bullet would expand radially against the rifling grooves and at the same time wrap around the stem, giving it a more efficient and aerodynamic shape. Colonel Thouvenin published his invention in 1844.

This system, although an improvement over Delvigne's method, would still not allow for a perfect engagement in the rifle, rendering the ball's trajectory rather erratic. The French Army however adopted the improvement in 1846. The Chasseurs adopted the system in 1853,., as well as the Prussian Jägers

Jäger (military)

Jäger is a term that was adopted in the Enlightenment era in German-speaking states and others influenced by German military practice to describe a kind of light infantry, and it has continued in that use since then....

, corps where marksmen

Marksmen

The Foggy River Boys was the name of two related American male singing quartets from southern Missouri specializing in spiritual and country music in the 1940s and 50s.-1940s group:...

 skills were essential.

The rifles would be known as Thouvenin tige rifles ("Carabines à tige Thouvenin"). The weapons used a 600 yards sight and used a hair trigger. The barrels were rifled with 8 grooves, making a turn every 36 inches.

The Thouvenin rifles had the inconvenience that they were very difficult to clean, especially the area around the stem.

Legacy

This development would be a precursor to the invention of the Minié ball

Minié ball

The Minié ball is a type of muzzle-loading spin-stabilising rifle bullet named after its co-developer, Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the Minié rifle...

 by Claude-Étienne Minié, as Thouvenin had already suggested that bullet with a hollowed base would be most efficient. Minié further developed his iron culot, with the objective of forcing the bullet outwards towards the groove through the impact of the culot against the inertia of the lead ball, in the same way as the Thouvenin stem, before even making without the culot. The much simpler system would supersede the Thouvenin tige gun, even allowing the transformation of any smoothbore into a powerful rifled gun ("Fusil rayé"), simply by the making of rifling grooves and usage of the appropriate Minié bullet, available to all the troops of the line.